The finish line is in view.

Hey everyone!

It's been a few weeks. Sorry 'bout that. Lots going on down here I guess...although not nearly as much as at home I think - since the last time I wrote there have been TWO student productions put up at BC - Jesus Hopped the A Train went up two weeks ago and Putnam County Spelling Bee is happening right now. I feel indescribable sadness at missing both of those ): but hopefully there will be videos.

Anyway, last time I wrote I was on my way to the One Movement music festival in Perth - we spent all day there on Saturday, and what a good time it was. Matt Nathanson played, he was great and very funny, I wish he'd had longer than a half hour set. We met him afterwards and got him to sign our free One Movement tank tops (HUGE tank tops...I look like a baller when I wear mine). He wrote "Kelsey is da bomb" on the back of mine, which I think is code for "I'm going to leave my wife and marry Kelsey." Just a thought. He was very friendly though, and really happy to meet some Americans in this corner of the world. One Movement was a long night - I saw probably 8 or 9 bands, most of them of the folk/rock persuasion. Whoever set up this festival did a really nice job of keeping people entertained - not only were there four stages with music playing all the time, there was a silent dance floor (you get a pair of headphones and can switch between a few stations and dance to whatever you feel like, but anyone without a pair of headphones can't hear what's going on - pretty humorous to watch and to be a part of), and...this was my favorite thing EVER...DUN DUN DUN...a Moon Bounce volleyball court. I know, I know, WHAT?! IT'S TWO OF THE GREATEST THINGS IN THE WORLD COMBINED! Exactly. You can dive after any ball and not hurt yourself. You can jump higher than you ever could on a regular court. I don't know why this is the first time I've come across one of these. I could literally spend all my time on one of these and not be unhappy.

What else has happened since then...introduced some of my friends to the beauty that is Wet Hot American Summer, that was a good time. We've set up a schedule for playing volleyball two or three nights a week - also a good time. On the 21st there was an early performance of Wounds to the Face for the 21st anniversary of Howard Barker's Wrestling School - I got to call the show for the first time, from this strange little stage management alcove just off stage right...very odd, but it went well, the few people that came to see the show enjoyed it overall. Since then we've been having night rehearsals with tech and my enjoyment level of this whole process has increased greatly. The show opens on Wednesday for real, runs until Saturday, then we strike and load-in Twelfth Night for another week of performances. GAH. And no time to study for my one, extremely important exam. I'll be doing ecology flashcards in the green room the whole time most likely.

Friday night a few of us went to a "springtime celebration" party at our friend Willow's apartment. She's got a really nice setup, the backyard has a fire pit and a patio and a hammock (the hammock tips easily, but the ground under it is relatively soft...), and there's a ladder going up to the roof, which is perfect for watching sunsets and sunrises. A few of us stayed over and attempted to watch the sunrise, but woke up juuuuuuust too late. Bummer.

Last Sunday was designated Family Day - Octave, Nelson, Jen, Lauren and I got into Jen's car around 10am and drove to Caversham Wildlife Park, about an hour away. Jen had me navigate, using a MAP of Western Australia - does she not know me at all? I guess I deserved it for sitting in the passenger seat...basically she ended up navigating herself and I just turned the pages. On the way back I was somewhat helpful. The park was pretty cool - kind of like a zoo, but better, because you get to interact with the kangaroos and koalas and the farm animals, and all the other animals are just generally less confined than in a zoo. It was definitely a worthwhile experience...got plenty of pictures of me petting roos and koalas (there were a TON of each...and the koalas actually opened their eyes and climbed around this time), but in general it made me pretty depressed. The animals are all totally domesticated, they have lost their natural instinct to be defend themselves against invading humans...I had a long think about the usefulness of zoos and wildlife reservations after that. But it was a really lovely day, a lot of quality time with the flatmates, and I fulfilled my "me+kangaroo picture" quota.

Keith scored a very legitimate gig at a hotel in North Freo last Sunday night, so a bunch of us trekked out to see that - very, very professional and cool. Keith actually thought about staying down here another semester to keep working on his music. The musical scene down here is a lot better than it is in Miami I guess, at least for the type of music Keith plays, and he's really gotten his name out in the bar scene in Freo. In the end, he's decided to go home, but he'll be remembered down here for awhile.

Last week was pretty quiet...lots of rehearsals, a few more gigs, some salsa dancing on Thursday night, Nelson's birthday...a lot of work. There's one week of classes left - ONE WEEK - and then we have a week of studying and then exams start. I've only got one exam and it's very very early, so really my semester is almost over. I'm feeling bittersweet already. Uncle Mike and I have made some great New Zealand plans though, and I think that will be a good distraction from this third home that I'll be leaving in a few weeks. Oy. I think everyone is starting to feel that race-to-the-finish-line syndrome...we're all working a lot, and spending as much time together as possible. Leaving is going to be tough.

Oh I forgot one thing - I went surfing on Thursday! Well, I attempted surfing on Thursday. Not at all successful. Kevin has a surfboard and a wetsuit, so he, Keith and I went to Scarborough, which is about an hour and a half away...loooong commute, the beach is beauteous, but GOSH is surfing difficult. Keith was the only one of us who managed to stand up once. I knelt on the board once and rode in, but mostly I was underwater and the surfboard nowhere near me. Once my exam is over I'll have a ton of free time, so maybe I'll find somewhere to get a surfing lesson and actually ride a wave...but I'm not promising anything.

I've also started teaching myself to play guitar...Octave and Nelson have guitars that they let me use whenever I want, and the online lessons are actually pretty good...maybe I'll be able to play a few songs when I get back, but again - not promising anything. I love it though - the fingers on my left hand are sore all the time from trying to learn chords; I can actually play a few pretty decently. If Jake lets me steal his never-used guitar when I get home I'm gonna keep this up.

TTFN - ta ta for now (:

Miss you guys!!!

So much sunshine.

Hey everyone!

A few highlights from the last week:

Rehearsals for Wounds to the Face continue to go well, but I will be beyond happy when I don't have to work with this director anymore. He's probably the least-respectful director I've ever worked with - talks over his actors every time they're onstage, doesn't let them make their own decisions, doesn't let his designers do their jobs...the rest of the cast/production team doesn't really know that what he's doing is wrong, I think, but I still hate it, they deserve so much more than that. The cast is doing such a good job, working so hard, and I'm actually enjoying watching the show more and more instead of getting sick of it.

Saturday Lauren and I explored Freo for awhile and found the COOLEST thrift store in the whole wide world - I don't need more clothing, but it was so cool. I tried on like twenty dresses. Then we returned home for a fondue party at our friend Emily's place - delicious, many chocolate-covered strawberries were consumed. Everyone was so, so tired afterwards though, there must have been something in the cheese...so Lauren and I went home and made a love nest, I can't remember if I've told you guys about this yet - we push the two couches together in our common room and it makes a nice little box of cushiony fun, then we put blankets and pillows in it and do homework or watch a movie or read or whatever. Lauren usually naps. It's the best thing ever - I think Jess started the trend, and I hear that now people do it all over the village. We usually love nest at least once a week. It's so cuddly.

The weather is BEAUTIFUL now, it's been at least 75 degrees every single day, and has started to get even hotter than that this weekend (today it's supposed to be 92, eek), so we spend a lot of our free time playing volleyball and jumping in the pool. SO Australia. I feel like a bum sometimes, but then I remind myself that I am here to experience the culture and meet people and enjoy Australia, and as long as I can get everything else done, I can play as much volleyball as I want. So I do. One night I played with a bunch of French guys - they were really, really intense and I thrown off-guard. Needless to say I was the worst one there, but they let me play anyway, and I learned a lot. I won't be surprised or offended if I don't get another invitation, however. My game has definitely improved since I got to Australia - so that's something (:

Tuesday was set building day at the theater, and out of the whole cast only four of us showed up...Serge was in a terrible mood, so that was a ton of fun. I shouldn't complain this much; here I have a great opportunity to stage manage a show, coming from very little stage management experience, I'm lucky that they let me do it. But me being lucky has little to do with how grateful Serge should be towards his cast and designers. I will be so happy to return to BC theater, that's all.

Tuesday afternoon I did another photo shoot with Lauren - actually I'm not sure if I told you guys about the first one; she's doing a project for her photo class on the human body and movement, so she's had Octave and I come in and do Kendo (that's Octave's specialty) and ballet/dance stuff. I love this...not only does she take wonderful pictures (it's amazing what a good camera can do), but it's made me realize that I miss dance SO MUCH. And it's really cool to have a big open floor to see what I am still capable of doing...which is a lot of stuff, surprisingly, but the days after each shoot I was so, so sore.

Wednesday I worked at the hospital again, went to the market to get some produce, played some more volleyball...no big deal. Thursday was another open mic night - Keith played at Moondyne's, this time in the sports bar, which was a HUGE venue, he played a few new ones and he and I sang a few together...we do a cover of Oh My Sweet Carolina by Ryan Adams now, and it went over really well this week - HOORAY. I had a sudden "wow I'm gonna miss this a lot" moment at Moondyne's that night...thinking about how sad it will be when I'm home and it's Thursday night and I'm not at some random bar in Fremantle with a group of Australians and other Americans watching Keith play, maybe getting to sing with him...now is not really the time to think about it (there is never a time to think about it while I'm down here), but the time is going so, so fast now. We've got four weeks of classes left, and then another 3-4 weeks in Australia. I had a conversation with a few girls last night about how everything down here is pretty much "everyday life" now - we're totally settled in, it's almost not a big deal that we're in Australia anymore, this is just what we do. There are always more adventures to be had, and I try to have at least one a day, but I feel like I've been doing this for years. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It feels like home, that's for sure. Not like my home in Uncasville or in Boston, but a home.

More rehearsal yesterday, more time by the pool, more volleyball last night, and a bunch of the girls went out to a Thai restaurant called Roxby - deeeeeeelicious. I haven't had Thai food in forever; it's just as good down here as I remember it in Boston. We got ice cream afterwards too, then went home and made a love nest. Today we're off to a free music festival called One Movement in Perth - I don't know most of the bands playing, but MATT NATHANSON is going to be there. WHOA. So really I just want to see him (and I'm totally going to try to meet him afterwards and ever so coolly get his autograph), but we'll hang out for awhile after him and see some of the other bands probably.

Oh the only other semi-exciting thing to happen this week - I got bit/stung by an ant like six times. The poor guy was stuck inside my shirt and I was lying on my stomach and he was freaking out trying not to get crushed probably...anyway he survived, I've got six huge welts on my stomach now that itch like crazy...go figure, I live in Australia, home to sharks, jellyfish, snakes, spiders...a ton of animals that will bite you if you mess with them, and I get bit by an ant. Seriously. What is my problem.

That's all for now - down under and OUT.

These are better days, baby.

I have the best flatmates in the whole wide world. Really. My experience in Australia has been so, so wonderful because of them.

Hi everyone (: Jess and I survived the week-long ecology project (we boosted our energy with several delicious dinners cooked by her flatmate Darren - tacos, curry, Asian cuisine one night, mmmmm) with only a few (read: TONS OF) scratches and mosquito bites, and at least fifteen hours staring into microscopes...overall I really enjoyed it though. The biology geek in me was in transecting, dissecting nirvana. The follow-up lab reports I have to write will be pretty difficult, but I have awhile before they're due...so if I get motivated to work on those soon, I should be alright.

Jess and I went to see a play in Northbridge one night - a one-man show called The History of Drinking. SUCH a cool concept. The audience is at most 22 people, and with your ticket you are given a drink menu, with about 25-30 drinks on it. Most of the drinks are alcoholic, but there's also soda, water, coffee, tea, etc. The actor, who's about 25, he also wrote the play, he acts as a quizmaster before every scene. If you get a question right (the questions are super easy, it's mostly a race to raise your hand first) you get a drink off of the menu. The catch is that each drink can only be ordered once, so you want to get a question right pretty early on to get what you want. After you get the question right, the actor will turn into a very sarcastic, very bitter waiter, and he'll come to your cafe table, ask you what you want and make it for you onstage. Then he'll give you your drink and do a scene that has something to do with the drink, or maybe just the name of the drink, whatever. Some of the scenes were hilarious, others were really tragic. It was a great night. Our friend Dave was stage managing, so we hitched a ride home with him - awesome.

Saturday a few of us went to Cottesloe Beach to celebrate our friend Blaine's 21st birthday - WHAT a nice day. The weather has finally decided to cooperate - no more rain, it's about 75 degrees every day now. Perfect. The beach was really, really pretty. It's pretty small but it wasn't too crowded, and even though we didn't swim much (or at all - too cold), we had a lovely time. Threw the frisbee, laid in the sun, read for awhile...very relaxing. And no sunburn in sight. The people-watching down here is a lot of fun - there was a dad and two boys (one belonged to him, the other was probably a friend or cousin) playing cricket - easily the most boring game ever invented, but they were having fun...there were two wedding parties taking pictures, there was another dad telling his teenage daughter to be home before dark...and probably some locals looking at us looking at them and saying "look at them. They're American."

So I've also had an amazing birthday down here. I feel like my birthday lasted about three days - Lauren made me dinner Sunday night - chicken carbonara with asparagus, as well as birthday cake and a really nicely decorated living room. Jennifer made chocolate macadamia fudge, muy delicioso. We had a little family dinner and watched Australian Idol and Knocked Up afterwards. Also, Lauren got me a bottle of champagne AND she made me the coolest scrapbook (she's the best scrapbook maker I've ever met) full of pictures of BC and a few of our time down under so far. I looooooove it and can't wait to show everyone at home. I am so lucky to have the flatmates that I have.

Yesterday was my for-real birthday, and I didn't have any classes, so I spent a lot of the day lying in the sun outside Jess and Keith's flat, had some champagne, threw the frisbee around for awhile, played some volleyball...a very sunny, very relaxing day. Darren made burgers, and he put fried eggs and Japanese mayo on them. Sounds weird, but it may have been the best burger I've ever eaten. Even better than (BC people don't get mad) the burgers in Hillside, I KNOW it doesn't sound possible, but I think it may be. THEN we had a little shindig at our flat, which I was pretty nervous about, but it turned out to be wonderful. I think everyone had a good time, I definitely did, and we totally didn't get fined for noise violations. We did get asked to be quiet by who we think was an RA, but she never came back after that. What a night. Had some serious clean-up to do this morning when I got up, but it was totally worth it.

I guess that's all I've got for now (: I got to Skype with many members of my family this morning, which made me cry, in a good way...and talked to Crystal for awhile after that, got all caught up on the happenings at UConn...life is good. I wrote a whole dang essay today too. I think we're going back to Cottesloe tomorrow - weather forecast says sunny with a chance of beautiful.

Until next time!

More videos.

I posted a few more videos - from Sustainability Week, at our tavern event - on the link at the right. Enjoy (:

My (guy) roommates wash the dishes TOGETHER.

HEY EVERYONE. I'm itching for stories from the US lately...if you've got some good ones I'd love to hear 'em. Uncle Mike and I even managed to Skype last night - I'm getting better at it! My computer is not...it still freaks out whenever anyone calls, but we usually get it sorted eventually.

So a fairly normal week, whatever that means in Australia...took awhile to recover from a birthday party last weekend, but I finally found some motivation to get a LOT of work done...I've been lacking that necessary element since we got back from the Northwest Trip. Classes are going pretty well though; just started a week-long ecology project today (we have this week off of classes, it's our second "study break"), and it looks like it's going to be fun...at least I get to spend some time outside in the sun (sampling plants and ants!) rather than in a lecture hall. I shall not complain. Today we took a lot of plant samples, measured abundance of plant species, and caught ants! Here's a tip, if you ever want to catch a lot of ants in a relatively short amount of time: get some ethanol and a paint brush, put the ethanol on the paint brush, gently tap the ant with the paint brush, and voila, you have a stunned ant. Much easier to put into a vial and take back to the lab for identification. We had to put ours in vials that also contained ethanol, so the ants died...my soul needs some repair after that. But we spent a really really long time trying to identify them, and I learned a lot from that...so perhaps they did not perish in vain. MAN does it take a long time to ID ants. You put them under a magnifying glass and it's so, so cool to see all the hairs (setae) and body parts that are way too tiny to observe when they're just running around in the sand, and what's really, really awesome is how different each species actually looks. They're extremely diverse, but the naked human eye can't do them justice. Anyway, I give EO Wilson mad props for what he's done - ants are really difficult to study, but a lot of fun in the end.

Anyway now that everyone realizes just how nerdy I am...last week! Volunteered at the hospital on Wednesday and had a great time, got to talk to a lot of new people - actually maybe I've never mentioned this before, come to think of it. So on Wednesday mornings I go to the Fremantle Hospital and work for a few hours with this lovely woman named Jeanne (she's French), pushing the library cart to patients' rooms in case they want some magazines or books. She had been doing it by herself, and she totally could continue to do so, but I really wanted to do some volunteer work while I was down here and I think Jeanne just wanted someone to talk to, so they let me do a few hours a week. She reminds me a lot of Great Grandma (or what I imagine Great Grandma was like when she was 72). Anyway I get to talk to patients, hopefully cheer them up a bit...it's just nice. And I get Jeanne's life story, as well as the stories of her four children and her husband's mother and her daughter's ex-husband...she's got an unending arsenal of stories. After leaving the hospital I usually hang out in Freo for awhile, then stop at a market on the way home (the CHEAPEST produce I've ever seen - a huge bag of carrots for a mere 79 cents...), and meet some more interesting people while I wait for the bus. Wednesdays are good days. They are also VOLLEYBALL days. Hooray. I'm going to miss volleyball when I get back to the states; I don't play it nearly as much at home as I do here. Gotta fix that.

Thursday Keith got a paid gig on campus, right in our courtyard...he played for an hour (I sang a bit with him too, which was cool) while people looked at the stalls of books and movies, etc...then that night we watched Glee (Lauren, Jennifer and I are obsessed, along with many other Americans) and I went to see Keith play another open mic.

Friday: Bogan Bingo. What a night. So "bogan" is slang for "hick," or "white trash" basically...as in "Britney Spears is such a cashed-out bogan." Not a very nice stereotype, but apparently a pretty common one down here. Every Friday night there's a bar in Canning Bridge that hosts Bogan Bingo. You are to dress up like a bogan (people actually asked to borrow my clothes...flannel shirts are IN at this thing), show up at 8:00, play bingo, and don't ask questions. There are two rounds of bingo, complete with a lot of yelling when certain numbers come up, an air-guitar contest, a best-dressed contest...and at the end they just turn the music up and everyone dances for a few hours before beginning the long trek home. We had SUCH a good time. Most of the crowd is older than us, so we college kids were a big hit - we'd only brought two guys with us and they got a lot of invitations to dance. I almost won once, too. In which case, I think my prize would have been a free beer. Ah well. Anyway if we go again this Friday there will be news crews there...not sure why exactly, but they're filming a night of Bogan Bingo, and we're all supposed to work really hard this week on our bogan costumes.

Saturday morning I was whisked away to Earthdance - a music festival on a nature reserve in the middle of NOWHERE...the town does have a name, it's Bencubbin, but its town center doesn't even have a petrol station. Just a bar that sells bags of ice. Anyway Earthdance is a three-day festival out in the boonies, you bring camping gear and set up wherever you like, and go listen to music and meditation sessions and "laughter yoga" sessions and dancing and whatever you want. I went with about ten other people (mostly Australians, but Lauren, Jess and Heather were there) and I had a GREAT time...we were a little out of our league, to say the least...it's definitely something to research ahead of time if you plan on attending, it's a pretty intense cultural immersion. But a worthwhile one, in the end. I hear they have them in the US - I gotta look into that for next year. Anyway it was a relaxing weekend, but it's nice to return to a really, really busy week this week. Whenever I get out of ecology early enough (it runs 9-5 each day but today we were done identifying our poor ants around 4pm) I have to go to rehearsal...my director is really not happy with me about missing so many this week, but I care more about the grade I get on this project, so, yeah.

That's about it for now. Oh yeah - I have the best flatmates ever. Really. I wish everyone could meet them...I may try to stuff them all in my carry-on luggage on the way home. They're all small, it should work.

Mucho amore.

Oh hey!

Hey guys - sorry it has truly been forever since my last entry, and given that I haven't even finished writing about the Northwest trip, I should probably get on it...

SO. Day six. A lot of driving, nothing terribly exciting, except for many more opportunities to push-start our bus, and when we reached our sleeping spot (KARIJINI NATIONAL PARK YESSSS!!!), we saw a ton of dingoes, and we got a constellation lesson from Terry. Here's the deal with the dingoes: SO COOL to see them up close, literally two feet away, and they just look like really pretty German Shepherds or something, but they're totally domesticated. They live in this national park, so people are always camping and giving them food, so now they just associate humans with free meals, and aren't afraid of people at all. No good ): so while it was great to take pictures of such a beautiful creature, we needed to shoo them away ASAP. When it got dark Terry taught us how to find the Southern Cross and the Scorpion and a few others...very, very cool. If he's got grandkids, they're lucky people.

Day seven: Karijini adventures. Our itinerary described this day as "FULL ON!" and boy was that right. The pictures do it much more justice (though nothing compares to the real live thing) than my words can (I put up all the pictures by the way, click the link on the right!), but I'll give it a shot. Took a rough morning hike down into Weano Gorge, which included a lot of steep cliffs, a ladder, and...dun dun dun...THE SPIDERWALK. Basically, the walls of the gorge are only about two meters apart, and the rocks under the water here are too slippery to walk on, so you put one arm and one leg on each wall, and spider-walk yourself through. A little scary to start, but it's easier than it sounds, and tons of fun. Terry and Fi supervised the whole time, of course. Once you get past the spiderwalk, it's cliff-jumpin' time. It's really dark in this part of the gorge because the walls are so tall and block out most of the sky, so the water is FREEZING, and the rocks all around the pool we were jumping into were wicked slippery (we had a few falls), so getting out of the water once you've jumped in is another story, but the jump itself is lovely. Not too high either - 20-25 feet maybe? We had a good time trying to get pictures of people in midair. I took a nice, long, chilly swim down the rest of the gorge with Keith, Gabe, Blaine and a few Danish guys...I felt very small. The walls are so high, the water is so deep...you just look up and can see a sliver of sky between the rock and all around you is more and more rock. What an unbelievable place.

Hiked a bit more to another place to swim (Hancock Gorge? Handrail Pool? I know I've been to these places but no clue which ones are which), where we also found Joffre's Waterfall - the waterfall is situated so that you can climb up the side of it and sit somewhere in the middle, what a nice view.

We were exhausted when we got back to camp that night, and you're not allowed to build campfires in Karijini, so most of us went to sleep pretty early. Fi, our boisterous female tourguide, was lucky enough to have another close encounter with a dingo - one stole her pillows. BRILLIANT. She chased it down and managed to wrestle one pillow away, but he made off with the other. Fi of course found it hilarious, her saved pillow was covered in red dirt, man was it entertaining.

Day eight: another hike in Karijini, this one not as treacherous as the day before...we ended up at Fortescue Falls, a nice place to swim (though also freezing), an even taller cliff for people to jump off of (I declined this one)...lots of great geology to take pictures of, and tons of sunbathing spots for post-swim naps. We swam there awhile, then hiked a few hundred meters to Fern Pool, one of the few spots in Karijini that Aboriginals still have total control over. There are signs everywhere reminding visitors to be quiet, to respect the area, not to jump off of cliffs or trees...and how glad I am that they have these. Fern Pool is paradise. The water is warm and sweet, there's a waterfall on the opposite side of the pool that you can swim to and sit under (you can actually get a decent back rub out of this thing, it's got a lot of pressure), the vegetation surrounding the pool is beautiful...what I would give to be able to swim here every day. I think I'll just move to Karijini, set up a tent somewhere and become friends with the dingoes. Sounds good. Anyway, we swam for a few hours, then had to head back to camp to pack up and get moving. A few more days of driving ahead of us, oh boy. We ended up at Newman that night, a mining town, where we got a lot of funny looks from the locals when we went to buy groceries...we were a huge group and pretty loud, I guess. We went to a bar that night and had some lovely conversations with miners...they're friendly enough, but they're all of the "sailor on leave" mentality - they're cooped up in this town for a few months at a time, not much female contact, so you just gotta be careful. Some of the guys on our trip had a great time trying to get male miners to buy them drinks though.

Day nine: driving driving driving until we got to Wogarno Sheep Station for our last night. I would love to live here - it's a sheep-shearing farm run by a family of parents, 15 year-old son, and a two year-old daughter. The farm is huge, and everywhere you look there's artwork. Most of it is made of rusted metal, probably old farm equipment, in shapes of horses and sheep and chairs and beds, but my favorite was the shadow of a tree created on the ground out of stones. I asked the son how they got there, and he said they invited art groups to visit their farm and do whatever they want. Some of them are kind of creepy (as in, some are made out of bones, and coming across them in the middle of the night by yourself may be scary), but SO creative. A few of us had a wonderful conversation with this kid, he told us about how he and his father had gone hunting that evening for kangaroos and emus, they caught a few. He has to take a week or two off of school (he goes to boarding school in Perth; there aren't any public schools in the area) for the hunting season. It truly is a whole other world out here. We slept under the stars that night, and woke up freezing, but worth it.

Day ten: home again home again. We drove all day long and returned to our wonderful roommates and hot showers.

DONE. Yay. Sorry that took me so long...the pictures may actually tell a better story than the blog, but I felt that I should finish it anyway. Gives ya something to read.

Life since then has had the volume turned down, for sure, but I'm finally back into the swing of things here. Found out I only have ONE exam, and it's on the first day of exams, so I have some travel plans to make for the middle and end of November if I still have money left...may head over to Sydney, who knows. Turned in my first assignment, had a wonderful time rock-climbing last weekend, sang a few more songs with Keith at our Sustainability Week event at the Tavern on campus yesterday (I'll post those soon), going to a Northwest Trip reunion this weekend, GOT TO TALK TO CLAIRE MATHIOT ON SKYPE LAST NIGHT, absolutely made my life...last weekend was audition weekend at BC so I got a lot of emails about that and was feeling pretty homesick, but talking to Claire made everything sunny and happy (:

Rehearsal time - miss you guys, hope you are well!

More tales from the outback.

Day three: Monkey Mia.  It's a little seaside town, mostly a tourist destination, and the place where we would get to see dolphins up close and personal.  So we awoke, as usual, to Terry hollering "TIME TO GET UP" (it sounds annoying, but actually it was endearing, I love that man) and sure enough, on the road by seven.  Monkey Mia is mostly a place to relax on the beach, but it was kind of cold for that...we did a lot of dolphin watching (they feed them right along the shore so if you go at the right time you can see a ton of them in really shallow water; nobody is allowed to touch them because their skin is really really sensitive to oils, but definitely the closest I've ever been to a dolphin.  Also, they pee every ten minutes), some pelican-harassing, and then had a fierce and fun game of beach volleyball.  That was really the highlight of the day.  On the way back to camp that night we stopped at a few different look-out points to hunt for sharks and sea turtles - no luck, but we may or may not have seen a whale.  WHOA.

During our third night we had another bonfire (after getting charged at by a kangaroo - not really - and watching another gorgeous sunset - really), and this time we were joined by Shane, the man who owns the land that our tents were staked on.  He's a middle-of-nowhere Outbacker - which means he's got a long beard and not all his teeth and tons of stories, many of them having to do with snakes and near-death experiences.  First he told us about the brown snake he got bitten by.  He reached his hand into something and the snake latched on; his first instinct was to break its neck.  Then he walked calmly into the store at his campground and asked someone to drive him to the nearest hospital (which is at least an hour away), because he only had about an hour and a half to live.  When he got to the hospital, there were no doctors there who were actually licensed to administer the antidote, so it took a little while for him to get the injection, but he survived.  He went home, put the snake in a bottle, drove straight to the bar, and put the bottled snake on the bar next to him for the night.  The other story he had was about the water python living in his shed - supposedly it's about 14 feet long, he found it awhile back and decided it couldn't live in his shed any longer, so he managed to get it out and put it in his truck, so he could drive it to the dam up the road.  Only problem: he didn't put it in the back of his truck, he put it on the passenger seat.  So by the time he got to the dam, the snake was wound around both him and the seat, and there was no way he was getting out.  So he took a cigarette lighter to it, (there may be some embellishment in this story, but it's a good one nonetheless) got it off of him, and threw it in the dam.  A few days later it was back in the shed.  He got a French guy to help him (Frenchie had to hold the snake in the truck, so this time he was the one who got squeezed), threw the snake back into the dam, and drove home, only to find it already in the shed when he got back.  So now the python lives in the shed, unbothered.  Obviously we wanted to see this python, so Shane took us out to the shed (first he showed us the museum on site, which used to be a telegraph station, one of the first in WA, and is also home to the only living stromatolites in captivity IN THE WORLD.  And it's a little shack in a no-name town, not commercialized at all - you gotta love Australia), and we couldn't actually find the snake, but we did find some of its skin.

Day four was driving driving driving until we got to Warroora, where we'd stay before our big exciting day at Coral Bay.  Day four was also "bus break-down day," so we spent a good amount of time at an automotive repair shop.  Not the most exciting day in the world, but with drivers like Terry and Fi it's never boring.  Let me tell you about Fi: I want to be her.  Or at least be related to her.  She loves Australia.  She's loud, she wears hiking boots probably every day, she's got crazy curly blonde hair and she knows so much about the towns and sights to see in WA, and she's got a great, infectious laugh.  She's one of those people you never forget, no matter how short a time you've spent with her.  Having her as our driver definitely enhanced the experience - she played the music on our bus really loudly (we usually passed around iPods, but she also got us into Matt Gresham, an Australian singer - we actually saw him in concert just last night, what a blast), made sure we were up to speed on our "random facts about Australia" know-how, and just kept us generally entertained the whole time.  She and Terry had walkie-talkies to talk to each other on the road, and we could often hear those hilarious conversations, even from the back of the bus.

The broken-down bus slowed us down a bit, but this actually provided for some really wonderful moments later on in the trip.  The bus was never totally fixed, so once in awhile it wouldn't start.  Enter the bus-pushing, ala Little Miss Sunshine.  Ten or twelve of us would line up behind the bus and start pushing it while Terry tried to get it started - gives you a nice sense of accomplishment to start the day off.

Spent the night in a warm room with Lauren - resort-like accommodations compared to our dilapidated tent.  Had another kangaroo experience in the early morning - had to pee, opened the door, kangaroo standing right outside.  Nice.  We caught the sunrise one morning here - I can see why a lot of Australians are early-risers.  It's addicting, seeing literal start of the day.

Day five: CORAL BAY.  One of my favorite days.  It was really windy, so there wasn't actually much we could do at Coral Bay (we couldn't go kayaking, boo), but what we did totally made up for it.  We took a glass-bottomed boat ride over Ningaloo Reef, which is a smaller, but much better preserved reef than the Great Barrier; on the way out we saw a ton of coral, lots of brightly colored fish, a sting ray, and a sea turtle through the glass.  We also spotted a ton of turtles (the area is a sanctuary for them) on top of the water, as well as dolphins, rays, maybe a whale?  THEN WE WENT SNORKELING!  I may need to move to Florida or the Caribbean, because snorkeling rocks.  Tons of neon fish (no Nemos, but a few Doris), lots and lots of really intricate coral...it's a science geek's dream.  Just before I got back onto the boat our boat-drivers decided to feed the fish right off the edge, and literally hundreds of these huge fish called Spangled Emperors swam right up to it, surrounding Lauren and I - a really strange feeling, but a pretty cool one, to be covered in fish.  We didn't do much after that - Keith and I went to an outdoor cafe and spent a few hours amusing ourselves trying to catch lizards and making up games using salt and pepper shakers and coins.  Terry and Fi brought everyone to happy hour at the bar - lots of fun (I was the only one who got carded - apparently I don't even look 18), Fi let everyone out of the bus on the ride home for a pee-break in the outback, good times.

So ends the second installment...I'm off to climb some rocks.  Indoors.  With harnesses on.  No worries (:

Until next time - miss you guys!

Here goes.

I only have an hour before class so we'll see how much I can spill out until then...

From before our ten days of wonderment: played pick-up ultimate frisbee Monday night (a weekly event), lots of fun...went to a huge potluck dinner at Keith's Tuesday night, run by Malte - full of wonderful food, I ate way too much...Wednesday night played volleyball again; this time we had a training session beforehand, and WHOA did that help.  We actually sustained a pretty decent game.  Woohoo.  Keith played another gig at Moondyne Joe's Thursday night, then it was home to finish packing and get some sleep before our early start Friday morning.

7:45am Friday: meet in the carpark AT THIS TIME AND NO LATER or you will be left behind.  Cool, except the buses were about an hour late.  No surprise there.  There were about thirty students on the trip, along with two tour guides and a Murdoch rep to make sure we didn't disgrace the university.  We got a riveting speech from the president of Murdoch (or some other position at the uni that requires him to wear a suit) about how he could kick us out of Murdoch AND out of our home unis if we behave inappropriately during our trip...his speech was so uncharacteristic of Australian authority figures, it kind of weirded me out.  But no matter.  We piled onto two buses, led by our fearless leaders - Terry and Fi (short for Fiona but don't call her that), and we were off.  I was on Fi's bus, accompanied by pretty much everyone else I knew going into the trip, and a bunch of new faces.  Day one was all driving.  We saw a lot of sheep, a lot of kangaroos (Fi was kind enough to stop the bus so we could take pictures), stopped for lunch at a really windy but beautiful seaside picnic area - my feet were so happy to be out of their shoes.  Our stop for the evening was in Lynton, where we stayed in a sheep barn on a big ranch.  The barn happened to be located at the bottom of a HUGE, GINORMOUS hill, which a bunch of us climbed up.  Keith and I kept climbing (we couldn't see the other side of the hill yet, and we wanted to find a good place to watch the sunset) and came upon a whole other world up there.  Lots of really cool vegetation, the grass was higher than my knees, there were these weird melons growing on vines along the ground...anyway we found the sunset, got a lot of pretty pictures of the Indian Ocean (I think?), then spent a good amount of time wandering back through the tall grass to the barn.  Terry made us dinner (as he did every night) with the help of some of us, we ate off of tin plates around a big long table; it was a scene out of the Waltons or something.  And I forget what we ate, but it was tasty.  That man knows how to cook.  After dinner we moved the furniture around and put our sleeping bags on the floor and crashed pretty early - we had 6am starts every day.

6am means 6am.  Terry bangs on the door, yells "everybody get up" four or five times, and we are outta there.  Every morning was cereal or toast for breakfast (sometimes we had a toaster, sometimes we did not), and we were on the bus by 7am.  Day two was spent mostly at Kalbarri national park - we climbed a gorge, hiked over a lot of really beautiful cliffs looking down on the Murchison River, took a ton of pictures...this is when I realized how good this trip was going to be.  The gorge we were in had clear paths, but if you weren't paying attention or wanted to be an idiot, it's definitely possible to hurt yourself by, oh, say, falling off the edge.  And our tour guides basically let us roam wherever we wanted.  There's so much more trust in Australia than in America.  For that I am thankful.  One of the very cool structures on these particular cliffs was nature's window - a naturally made hole in rock looking over the river - photo op!  We went a little shutter happy.  That night we stayed at a place called Hamelin Pool, where we found, brace yourselves, STROMATOLITES!!!  Here's the deal with these babies.  They are the oldest life form on earth, and because they actually PRODUCE oxygen, they are responsible for the atmosphere we all know and love.  They're pretty badass.  And Hamelin Pool is the only place on earth where they are easily accessible by humans, although they are found in the Bahamas and in one other place in Australia.  Basically, they look like funny-shaped rocks.  They sit along the shore of a beach, there's a boardwalk that goes out to them so you don't step on any, and there they are: behold the beginning of life as we know it.  A few of us already knew about the stromatolites before we got to Hamelin Pool, so needless to say, we were ecstatic.  This is also evident given the number of pictures I took of these guys.  But it's hard to get other people to be excited about rocks if they have never heard of them before, no matter how heroic the rocks are.  We were the only people out there; I'm amazed anyone else finds this place, to be honest.  It's out in the middle of nowhere, when you get to the boardwalk there are a lot of placards with information about the stromatolites, but other than that you're on your own.  You don't have to pay to see them, they trust you to stay on the boardwalk (again, kudos Australia); seems to me, if we had this kind of scientific goldmine in America we'd have totally commercialized it by now.  Think of all the scam attractions we have in the US - this is real, live old rock, and the Australians just let it be.  This country has got its head screwed on right.

Hamelin Pool became "the place of sunsets" - for the two nights we stayed there we spent at least 45 min each night watching the sun go down.  Oh to do this every night.  We tented while we were there - I was in a tent with Lucy, Lauren and Julie - THAT was fun to set up.  The first night it looked a bit dilapidated (we were missing some parts), but we got it together by night two.  Both nights we had a big fire before and after dinner.  To quote Keith: who needs technology when you've got fire?  Seriously - we were entertained for hours.  Now here comes Aussie animal encounter number one: the first night we were at Hamelin Pool, I had to pee very early in the morning.  I did not want to walk all the way to the bathroom, so I decided to pee behind a tree.  It was still dark.  When I went to leave, I looked to my right and OH HELLO KANGAROO - there's a big red kanga about 2oo feet away.  Now, kangaroos are actually pretty dangerous - if I haven't said it already, they can attack you WITH ALL FOUR LIMBS AT ONCE.  But this guy was far enough away that I just watched him (or her) for awhile, then went back to my tent.  Oh yeah - the stars were perfect.

Oh these entries are going to be long.  I've gotta go to class so I'll stop here.  Hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend!  Love you guys.

Alive.

Hi all - just got home from ten days in the outback, so there will be several long entries about that as soon as I get my bearings back and the red dirt out of my hair...just wanted to say hi and hope y'all are well (: especially you guys who moved in to college the last week or so...fill me in.

Love you all and miss you heaps!

Meditation & Famine

Why hello.  40 Hour Famine is over!  Turns out there was a bit of a snag in the 52-hour count Keith and I had made earlier this week...famine started at 8pm on Friday, not 8am.  Well gosh, that's where all those extra hours came from!  So he and I ended ours after forty hours, which was at 6pm yesterday.  I was really, really hungry.  Yesterday was not a very productive day either...but dinner was GREAT.

I think I wrote last on Wednesday.  Here goes.  Wednesday night was volleyball night with the Sustainability team - we ended up just playing against ourselves (there were a ton of us), but it was heaps of fun.  Thursday I worked at the Sustainability Team table at the market in the morning, doing my best to get others to sign up or to sign our petitions or just inform them of what we were doing on campus (which is, at this point, not a whole lot more than playing volleyball every Wednesday night...but we're getting there).  I went to a Deep Ecology lecture later on - so cool, it's all about reconnecting back to the earth, this guy named John Seed (how appropriate) travels around the world giving workshops; this was just a lecture, but it was very enlightening.  He also performed two poem/song-things he had written, and gave us free Tim Tams.  I have zero to complain about.  THEN I went to a meditation class, so, so worth it.  Meditation is HARD, but I'm going to try to practice whenever I can.  You're supposed to do it as soon as you wake up; now I don't know how well that will work if Lauren gets up with me, but I'll figure it out.  Our instructor (I honestly have no idea if this person was male or female) also tried to teach us walking meditation, which theoretically you can do anywhere, but that's much harder, I don't know about that one.

I hung out at the tavern with some of the Sustainability team for awhile - Keith and I needed to rehearse for the open mic that night - then we competed in a club competition against a group called the Queers (the GLBT society on campus) for $200 for our club.  The competition was trivia, song identification, and then a few nail-biting rounds of pictionary - SO CLOSE, but we lost by one point.  However, the Queers were nice enough to give us half the money, because it was so close.  What champs.  Then OPEN MIC NIGHT!!!  At Moondyne Joe's - Keith went up and played three songs by himself, then I sang Sweetest Girl with him to close.  The video is posted along with my pictures if anyone's interested - I had such a good time; I think we'll do it again later this week?  Keith and I headed back to his flat to have some ceviche as our "last supper," until his flatmate Jess forced some tasty pasta on us as well...she was concerned that we would starve, you see.

Friday Friday Friday...well the famine supposedly started at 8am, so off we were.  I had class at 8:30, then a meeting at 10 with the director of the show I'm stage managing.  I thought the meeting would take about an hour...well, I was wrong.  By about 100%.  Two hours later, I was off to the library to get a headstart on some paperwork for the show, then off the rehearsal at 1:30.  Don't look now, but I actually think I can handle this job.  Now that I've said that, I'll probably crash and burn...but I'm staying above water so far, how much harder will it get?  Ha.  Right.  The director reminds me of Jim Radgowski a little bit, not totally...I'm not sure who reads this so I won't say anything else on THAT comparison...

Friday night I watched Fight Club for the first time, check that one off the list.  Saturday was the opposite of productive because I was so dang hungry.  I did a lot of reading (some for class, some not), got a call from Keith deciding that we should end the famine after 40 hours instead of 52, agreed, and ate a delicious dinner of pasta and chicken.  Mm mm mm.  Today I've been trying to get work done, but mostly failing...mostly due to slam poetry on youtube.  I'm an addict.  I've actually started writing some myself now; I wrote a bit this summer, but never really finished anything...I think I'm going to try to get a few done here so that when I get back to Boston I can actually go to some slams and maybe perform.  I love watching slam though - Marty McConnell, Sarah Kay, and Rachel McKibbens are my favorites if anyone wants some brain food - and I think it's good for you.  A poem a day, at least.  They've got important things to say, and they say them in some fantastically creative ways.  Sarah Kay is especially impressive, she's only 20 or 21, and she's got some videos of when she was 18...the lyrics she writes are so beautiful and so relevant.  I've probably watched about 3 hours worth of poetry this weekend, eeks.  Ah well.  Good for the mind, good for the soul.

So what are you guys up to?

(:

Photographic treats.

More pictures are up!  Two albums, not a ton of pictures but you'll get the idea (: also, in the album entitled "A bit more of Australia," check out the video of Keith and I singing "Sweetest Girl" at open mic night at Moondyne Joe's last Thursday.  Quality's not that great, but again - you'll get the idea.  SO much fun, and Keith and I have rehearsed four or five songs together so hopefully I'll have some more videos to show you guys soon.  I have a ton of just Keith singing, I should post those too...

Anyway, enjoy, send me anti-hunger vibes!  I'll write a real post later this weekend.  Right now I'm too hungry, and helping Lauren make a grocery list...our bill this week will be so much higher because all I can think about is food right now, haha.

MISS YOU GUYS.  If anyone wants to Skype soon let me know, I got to talk to my family (and my extended family of Stephan, Melissa and Sue) for over an hour today, and that hit the spot better than any foodage could (:

Love.

Dolla dolla bills, y'all.

HEY YOU GUYS!

This is going to be a short entry, full of cheap shots...well, one cheap shot.  I mentioned in my last entry that I'm participating in the 40 Hour Famine (which we've determined is actually 52 hours, go figure) this weekend, actually starting this morning at 8am, and I'm looking for sponsors.  So if you feel like giving me money to not eat for the next day and a half, here's the link: https://famine.worldvision.com.au/famine.cgi?a=SPONSOR_&pn=292354016.

All of the money actually goes to World Vision, an international organization that raises awareness about and seeks solutions for the global hunger crisis.  It's become a very important cause, I would love it if anyone feels like contributing - but absolutely no obligation.  I think if you click on the link above it'll take you right to my page, everything is done by credit card after that, but let me know if it doesn't work.  And THANK YOU so much if you are able to donate - it really means a lot to the people who receive it, and to me.

That's all for now...I'll write sometime this weekend if I can muster up the energy (:

Love you all.

Waitin' on a sunny day.

I need to get better at Skyping. Also, I can't believe that's a commonly-used verb. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. Regardless, I keep missing my family by twenty minutes or so...by the time I reach them now they'd better have a four-hour block available to catch up properly. HEY FAMILY - I MISS YOU GUYS.

A few adventures since I last wrote...Sunday morning was another tree planting escapade, this time we got rained on a bit, but still a lot of fun - I was with a much chattier bunch, mostly familiar faces, so even more enjoyable than our first go at it. Other than a trip to the grocery store (or to the IGA store, which is a kind of lukewarm grocery store, but they're open way longer than Coles so who can complain?) Sunday was dubbed "Catch up on all the reading you should have done this week" day. And oh the reading I did.

Monday, Monday...ecology lecture in the morning, we learned about soils...really interesting stuff, and I wish I was being sarcastic here. I always find it so unrelatable and almost offensive when I hear that people DON'T think nature is interesting. I know that's dumb, because there are millions of people in the world who would say they don't have the time or energy or willpower to appreciate the earth...but it's also very sad to me. Australians DO. They love it. They try really, really hard to make their country sustainable, and they have to work a lot harder than we do in the US because their climate is so damn unforgiving. Also, the middle of the continent may as well be considered "unexplored," so who knows what's really going on. I've had a handfull of conversations the last few days with people about climate change, whether it really exists, what can be done about it, what is "clean coal" anyway, is it too late...and some of these conversations have been really frustrating to be a part of, but the point is, we're talking about it. Murdoch has a whole major devoted to sustainable development, plus all your typical natural science options. I'm a bit starstruck I guess.

Lauren and I did a bit of op shopping (thrifting) on Monday in between classes - there's a Salvos (Salvation Army - don't you love this slang?) down the street from Murdoch, so I found another book, two dresses...I'm definitely selling/donating a bunch of my clothes when I leave here. Ain't no way I'm going to fit them all back into my suitcase and backpack. Maybe we can have a garage sale in Freo! Heck yes.

My other class on Monday was Shakespeare, which meant...dun dun dun...CAST LIST TIME. And I did not get the part I wanted, but I did get a part pretty well suited for me, and one that will be a lot of fun to create, so I'm not disappointed. Our director is writing a script for another play, called Master of the Revels, which will fit into and on top of Twelfth Night; there are seven of us cast in that play (I'm playing the Stage Manager, how's that for appropriate) and we don't exactly know what we're doing yet, BUT I do know that my character (a sarcastic, overintelligent SOB) has a tiff with the character Ingenue, because the SM thinks she could play the role better, blah blah blah...well the girl cast as the Ingenue happens to be the girl in the class that I'm pretty sure can't stand me. I'm not sure she can stand anyone, or that anyone can stand her. Oops. Hope she doesn't read this! Maybe we'll become best friends and she'll want to know everything about my life, in which case I'll do some editting to this entry...

Monday night Lauren and I went to a rehearsal for Perth Undergrad Choral Society - way way out in a town called Stirling, on the UWA campus. I'm bummed about this because I was really hoping it would be a great musical experience that we would want to return to every Monday night...but it was not to be. The music was fine, although tricky because this was rehearsal #5 or 6 and we had to dive into it...it's all classical pieces from the Baroque era, not the most exciting songs, but still music and definitely worth singing. But it just wasn't very much fun. The choir itself is mostly adults, very few students and nobody else from Murdoch, it was a hike to get out there, there's a membership fee...just not really feeling it. We'll have to get our musical kicks somewhere else.

Yesterday was rainy, but Lauren and I went for a run anyway - not a great decision but a fun one, then I worked at the barbecue stall for the fundraiser I'm doing this weekend called Forty Hour Famine. I worked out last night that it's actually fifty-two hours, so I'm not sure where the title comes from, but regardless, this weekend I will not be eating from 8am Friday to 12pm Sunday. Hopefully I'll get some people to sponsor me so I can give some money to World Vision, a group that raises awareness for and tries to offers solutions to the global hunger crisis, among other causes. I'm looking forward to that actually.

I also went to a meeting for the Murdoch Uni Sustainability Team yesterday, that was good fun - all my Australian friends are in the group. Murdoch has a whole week devoted to sustainability ("Sus Week") coming up soon, so we've got a bunch of events to get ready for. AND we have a volleyball team that plays every Wednesday at 6pm. Peeeeerfection.

Lauren and I made tacos last night! The making and eating of tacos dirties many a' dish, but it was worth it. We managed to avoid having to evacuate for the fire drill too, I'm not sure how, but nobody banged on our door and told us to get the hell out, so we were able to enjoy our dinner. A welcome quiet night last night. Keith made ceviche - not sure if I spelled that correctly but it's fish that you cook using lime juice (because no bacteria can withstand the POWER OF CITRUS!!!!) and add cilantro, garlic, peppers, onions, etc...then you can eat it on chips. And it's delish. So I got that going for me.

That's all I've got. I'm gonna go eat breakfast and stare at my computer screen some more in hopes that someone with the last name Alexander will return. For all you 80s cats - I got several emails this week telling me that I missed a top-notch show. So congratulations (: especially you Montvillains - though I expect nothing less from you guys. Tell me someone has a DVD of it that I can watch in December?

Hug each other for me.

Why this is the greatest place on earth.

I don't actually have a list of reasons - but the statement still stands.  After this week I'm 100% convinced that I'm in the right place.  Not much of that has to do with classes themselves...I go to them, they're even interesting (NOT my ecology lecture...although in class yesterday I had to stand up and pretend to be a tree, that was fun), but it's all about the people I've met and the places we've been.  People are so active here - they want to do something every night, doesn't matter what, nobody wants to sit in their rooms.  And my advice (passed on from Chris Turner, the Australian exchange student in the BC theater department last semester) to any student in a foreign country, or even your own country - you have to be a yes man.  Say yes to everything, just go, experience it, you will get so much more out of your time, wherever you are.

Some highlights from the last week:

Open mic night on Tuesday - Keith and I ventured into Northbridge and he played a set at the Impact Bar, then we explored the city for a little while and ended up walking home from the Murdoch station, but not a bad time at all.

Keith's birthday on Wednesday - I made a cake!  In our terrible oven.  And it actually turned out moderately well, given the circumstances...the way our oven works, it cooks the top of the food first, but doesn't cook the inside AT ALL.  So before I could safely say that the cake was totally baked, the top had burned...but I peeled it off, frosted it, and covered it with gummy snakes.  Totally fine.  Keith's flatmates had gotten him a cake too so all our bases were covered.  Jess made really yummy pasta with chicken and pesto, Darren made mushroom sauce - I don't know if I've been that full in the last month.  We went to the Newport, did some dancing, went home, stayed up way too late...just a great night overall, and I think one of the best birthdays Keith has ever had.

Thursday - Class at 10:30, not fun given the five hours of sleep I'd gotten then night before.  Oh well.  Keith had another open mic gig, this time tons of Australians came along - so many new friends.  Keith won a bottle of wine that night for playing - the "No good reason" award, now he has to sing a Doris Day song next week at the same time...eeeks.  Another beautiful night.

Friday - Ecology at 8:30 (death...this was when I had to be a tree for Professor Ladd), then auditions for Wounds to the Face (the show I'm stage managing) in the afternoon.  Boy, was I nervous.  Audition day isn't terribly stressful for a stage manager, this became clear pretty early on, but I was so worried about not knowing anyone, not having any authority, us not being able to cast the show, whatever.  They went so well.  Everyone who auditioned had clearly put a lot of work into their pieces, we were able to see characters for everyone, it was just great.  And I got the hang of it, eventually.  Now I know names too, which is really good.  And the director told me I did a good job (: yay.  Did a little face painting in the afternoon with the Aussies (I became a butterfly) and went out afterwards, butterfly and all.  THAT was fun - lots of strange looks, but we had quite the motley crew - Lauren was a fish (obviously), Keith was a shark, Anna was Spiderman, Rachel was a baboon...good times.  There is so much to do around here at night, so many places to just walk around or go inside and sit if you want to.  And public transportation is really reliable and really easy to get from point A to point B.

Today was Fremantle day - I just got back, did a little thrift store exploring, got tickets for Earth Dance, which is this music festival happening at the end of September - it's kind of like an Australian Woodstock or Bonnaroo, but on a much smaller scale.  It happens on a farm, everyone camps out and there's just music and dancing the whole weekend.  I tell ya - if you make friends with Australians, you find out about EVERYTHING.  It's great.  So I went to the market again today, helped Krystal find a dress to go salsa dancing in, had lunch with John, Jessica and Heather at a Mexican restaurant...another successful day.  I'm going to have so much reading to do tomorrow (after tree planting and a volleyball tournament - this is the life), but it's worth it.

Uncle Mike - get down here.  You're gonna love it.  Anyone else who can - get down here.

Can't wait to hear how Back to the 80s went...miss you all!!!

PICTURES, finally.

For anybody interested in pictures, there's a link on the right-hand side of the blog, under a handy little title "pictures from down under!"  These ones are just from the first week, I've got more I'm gonna post now...I'll try to keep you guys updated about when I put more pictures up (:

An unexpectedly perfect day.

G'day mates!  Well, g'night mates from down here...but what a day it has been.  If ever I doubted my choice of city or even country for studying abroad, after today, no more.  I've got details about the last few days that you may or may not be interested in, but first - my wonder-full Sunday.  Lauren and I planned to go to King's Park, this HUGE (we're talking 450-ish acres) park in Perth, full of native trees and wildlife...but forecast was not so good.  So we decided to bus it to Freo instead, with a plan of finding a cafe to eat lunch in and maybe do some reading.  We walked around Freo a bit, enjoying the 100% perfect weather and clear-blue sky (not a threatening cloud in sight, thanks a lot weather.com), happened upon a "garage" sale.  Some girls trying to sell a bunch of clothing and shoes - I got a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt for an oh-so grand total of $9.  Both items of clothing very ripped and worn (but wearable!) - gotta love hand-me-downs.  I also got a really cool leather bag (from Indonesia?  I think that's what she said) for free - part of it is torn, but I will find a way to fix it.  I hear duct tape can do anything.

We found ourselves at Merchant Coffee, a very cool little cafe on the main strip in Freo, and had a great, inexpensive lunch.  We decided we were too full to read, so we wandered around Freo a bit, and here's when I decided that Fremantle, WA is the raddest city this world has to offer.  We went down a side street we had never seen before and first found a store themed entirely around Alice in Wonderland.  It sold teapots, soaps shaped like teapots, costumes for little kids (some shaped like teapots), lots of Alice-themed toys, and it even had a little room in the back, behind a pink and green curtain, WHERE YOU COULD HAVE YOUR OWN TEA PARTY.  Two miniature tables with miniature chairs and a miniature tea set.  There was even a miniature television playing a regular-sized version of Alice in Wonderland.  We could have spent days in that shop, but we had studying to do, so we moseyed out.  THEN we found Fairy World.  A whole store about fairies.  The cashiers were wearing wings and fairy skirts.  They sold fairy dust by the kilogram.  Oh. My. God.  We found an Irish pub too - didn't go in, but earmarked it for a later date.  There was a busker in there playing some sweet guitar - okay by me.  On our way out of the street of magic, we came across a store called "Recycled Clothing."  Turned out to be a thrift store (and a pretty expensive one at that, boohoo), probably the most well-stocked and Kelsey-friendly thrift store I've ever been to.  I didn't buy anything, but if I ever come into a lot of money while I'm down here, I will...probably put it in the bank.  And then wish I had spent it at this store.

We were still too full to read, so we wandered to the Fremantle market.  When I get older and have a money tree growing in my backyard, my house will contain the following things: a huge, Beauty and the Beast-esque library, a planetarium, two or three Australian shepherds (they're a breed of dog, don't worry) and the Fremantle market.  It's full of stalls of clothing, cds, bars of soap (everyone in Australia sells bars of soap...I have not yet figured out why.  I can only hope this means that everyone down here is clean.), incense, scarves, boomerangs, probably some blackmarket body parts...EVERYTHING.  We probably spent an hour just looking at the stalls.  PS Mol - at this antique stall there was a necklace with a Freemason's symbol on it...think Wainey knows anything about that?  However, my favorite part of the market, the piece de resistance if you will: the produce section.  Free samples everywhere, fruit and vegis are way cheaper here than at the supermarket, everything is local and DELICIOUS, everything is fresh, there are people yelling and weighing and bagging and eating and laughing and IT WAS HEAVEN.  We bought some apples, bananas, and strawberries, and I probably consumed at least one whole apple with all the sampling I did.  We're going to make this a weekly trip - and let me tell you, as far as my list of "things to do" goes, "buy produce at the Fremantle market" may top "go to the pub."

Fruit in hand, we decided we were still too full to read, but that we needed dessert.  We found an Italian pastry shop called Fiorento's (or something else Italian), bought gelato, and ate outside in the sunshine.  MAYBE we should go read now...we headed over to the park, found a bench, and read for about twenty minutes before deciding we should get back to Murdoch if we want to make it to church on time.  And there ends our perfect day.

Church was AWFUL.  I have never been so uncomfortable and so angry at the same time in my entire life.  We had met some people a week ago, all very friendly, and they told us about the church services they ran on campus.  The church itself is Christian, and not affiliated with Murdoch at all, but they have their services in one of the lecture halls on campus.  So we decided today would be a great day to test out the waters.  AND WE ARE NEVER GOING BACK.  It seemed innocent enough - every person we saw wanted to meet us, asked us what we were studying and where in America we were from - great.  I made a few friends.  Then a rock band came out and started singing Christian music, also fine.  Everyone was really, really enthusiastic about it.  Everything really was okay until the pastor started speaking.  I have never heard a more chauvinistic, self-righteous, ignorant man at a podium.  He read a bit and then he just kept telling stories, all about himself...and they were degrading to women, to men, to people who didn't believe in Jesus...and everyone just accepted it!  The insides of my cheeks must have scars from how hard I was biting them.  Lauren and I declined to stay for coffee, and instead booked it home to complain about the service.  Here's the thing - worship whomever and however you want.  But when your worshipping interferes with or patronizes someone else's well-being, or their GENDER?!, for Pete's sake, it's not okay.

So we were angry.  We ate strawberries and felt better.  And that was my day!  I practiced my monologue, did not do anymore Shakespeare reading, and wrote this.

Here's some Sparknotes for the last few days...

Thursday - Festival Day - I had high expectations for this, no luck, but I did manage to sign up for a bunch of clubs (including Bedlam Theater Society, which is putting up a performance of "Sweet - a new musical based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer!" at the beginning of September...they had auditions last semester, so I won't get to be in that one, aw shucks).  Went out that night to see Keith do two open mic gigs in two different pubs - NICE.

Friday - Ecology class in the morning, an interesting Skype conversation with Mols (I didn't have sound but she did, I felt like Helen Keller), went to a yoga class, then off to my first Acting and Production II class.  Actually at the start I thought about dropping it...but instead, decided to stage manage our show.  And maybe act in it too?  I don't know how that's going to work.  But it's called Wounds to the Face, by Howard Barker, and rehearsals start on Friday.  YES.

Saturday - TREE PLANTING DAY!!!  Lauren and I joined thirty other earth-lovin' kids (including several adorable four and five year-olds, gotta start 'em young) and adults and, in our group of eight, we planted probably 350 seedlings.  And got some free sausage.  Saturday night we went out to a club/bar place called The Newport Hotel - that place was a' hoppin'.  There was a live band (they played all American music...Good Charlotte and Blink-182 and Bryan Adams), really cool lighting, just a great atmosphere, and no cover charge - we're going back.

I think that's it.  Sorry for the long-winded wordiness of this one, I haven't written a long entry in awhile.  If you made it all the way to the bottom of this (or of any of my super-duper long entries), remind me to give you a hug when I get back.

Love you guys...and I'm looking for reviews of Llama Tsunami's performance the other night if anyone caught that - be brutal, they can take it (:

And I thought Australia was about relaxation...

Just kidding - it totally is.  I'm relaxed 24/7 down here.  But I did emerge from my first Acting and Production II class today with a position as stage manager as well as a small acting role in our class production that goes up at the beginning of November.  And I've still got auditions for Twelfth Night to contend with on Monday.

That long-awaited butterflies have returned to my stomach...I'm officially busy again.

(Look for a longer entry tomorrow or Sunday, I've gotta get some reading done tonight.)

PEACE - go see the Llama T show tonight in Groton!  Hottest ska this side of the Thames (:

Something I forgot to mention!

Oh yeah - vegemite - check that off the bucket list of '09. Twice. It's not as bad as most Americans make it out to be...it's super salty, you eat it on toast, it kind of sticks to your throat on the way down. And it looks like poop on bread. Maybe it is that bad. But I survived the encounter, was even naive enough to try it again. It's actually worse the second time.

I'll try to smuggle some home.

And so it begins.

I've officially gone back to school. At the beginning of August. There's something wrong about that, but actually, I like it. I've always thought summer was too long - my brain needs some structured stimulation after two months of FRIENDS dvds (although I do love them...). First though, our final weekend of freedom. I went to a pub! Saturday night, I went out with Keith and his roommates (Malte, German, and Kirsten, Danish) to Perth to meet up with some other German exchanges at the Belgian Beer Pub on Murray Street. We got off the train in Perth around 9:30pm, and after a LOT of walking in the wrong direction, came upon this European look-alike pub, full of twenty-somethings and other college students. It took a bit of convincing to get the bouncer to let us in, because I was the only one with a passport (I hate carrying it around, but that's usually the only ID they'll take at bars and pubs); luckily, it was his last night on the job, so we were eventually let in, with instructions to "not stay longer than an hour." Keith bought the first round of Stella Artois, a popular beer in these parts (and one of the cheaper varieties) and we squeezed in at a little cafe table with the five people we were meeting up with. What a nice night. They turned the lights on around midnight and we began our long, cold journey home (the buses had stopped running, so we had to walk from Murdoch Station - not fun), but the few hours we spent in the bar were great. It felt very adult, but not in an intimidating way. And not in an unsafe way either, for all my relatives who are unhappy they started reading this entry (:

Sunday was pretty quiet, except that I played volleyball for a total of four or five hours I think. Lisa, a friend from Germany, got us started that afternoon, and I played with a huge group of people I didn't know after the barbecue we had that night. I didn't suck! Not anymore than anyone else at least. Somehow I end up in the sand after every single hit though. Not sure why that happens...I just like falling down I guess. Lisa is going to try to get a game going every Saturday.

Monday: time to go back to school. First I had to go see Emma about the North West trip, this big excursion during one of our weeks off for the international students to explore a bit of the Australian coast. I tried to sign up but had an issue with the bank...ended up being a bit stressful, so I wasn't in a great mood to start off my first day. THEN I got lost. I thought I knew just where my class was, I wrote down the room number and everything...well turns out, it was my professor's office room, not the lecture room. Great. A very nice woman in the enviro office found a time table on her computer and directed me to the right room. I was only about five minutes late to ecology, but not happy. I had to sit at the back of the room and it was difficult to pay attention/understand what Professor Ladd was saying - the accent, the distance, not a good combo. It was pretty boring, mostly introductory business stuff, but we do have a field trip in two months that should be fun.

Went home, had lunch with Lauren and Tina (another German friend), and then went to my marathon Shakespeare lecture and workshop - slated to last three whole hours. Well turns out, college theater departments in Australia and America are very similar. Full of best friends, and the "outsiders" have NO CLUE what's going on. It'll be alright, I just gotta get to know some people and become involved...I did meet a few, and everyone is, surprise surprise, super friendly. I think the class is going to be very entertaining - the professors are very casual, everyone goes by first names, lots of joking around...not at all unlike DSTP or Acting II at BC. The best part of class was the announcement that we would be putting on a production of...dun dun dun...TWELFTH NIGHT!!! My favorite Shakespeare, and coincidentally, the show Scott is directing on Mainstage this November. I was so bummed when I learned that I wouldn't be able to see and/or work on Twelfth Night at BC this fall, but auditions are on Monday, and because it's a totally student-run show (directed by our professor), it looks like I'll get to work on it in some way no matter what. There's a part I'd love to play, but I have no idea what I'm up against in this course...maybe all these students have been acting professionally and studying Shakespeare in all their spare time (believe me, we have a lot of it) for years, and I'll end up on stage management or lighting or something. That wouldn't be a bad thing either. The only downside to this setup is that my other acting course, Acting and Production II, puts up a performance the week before Twelfth Night. Gulp. So I'll have two tech weeks in a row. Not impossible, but I'll be tired. After last semester at BC, with Real Thing, Oleanna, and Charity all in a row - I think I can handle it.

Tuesday and Wednesday I have NO CLASS, so yesterday Lauren, Keith and I ventured into Freo to investigate the Fremantle library, in hopes of finding a solution to the "paperback copies of Shakespeare are wicked expensive at the bookstore" problem that I discovered. Seriously - $30 for a copy of Henry V? No thanks. The texts are all available online, but I sometimes like to read outside, in the grass and sunshine, so I was hoping for a few hard copies. We left Keith to do some busking (street performing, he plays guitar - more on that later) and headed inside. Boy, what a failure. First we inquired about library cards: $20 deposit for a "temporary membership" if you're not a citizen of WA. Okay, fine. We hunt around for books, I had a stack of five or six (including Twelfth Night, yippee!) that I wanted to check out, but oh wait, if you're only a temporary member you can only take one at a time. Well no thanks, not for $20 - so we're outta there. When I run out of books in my room I may venture back, but I've got friends with paperbacks and we'll do some swapping until then. The library on Murdoch's campus doesn't have anything but course reserves and reference books, so there's no help there. I have definitely developed a greater appreciation for the library system in the United States, especially BC with it's huge stacks of available reading. Don't be alarmed if you find me hugging the shelves on the fourth floor of O'Neill in January.

We found Keith on a bench in a street square, with a good five bucks in his guitar case and still playing...what a perfect afternoon that turned out to be. He's good - he sings and plays lots of Dispatch covers, State Radio covers, Jack Johnson, and some originals. Lauren and I harmonized when we knew the words (and sometimes when we didn't) and had a wonderful time. There were some people advocating for the Wilderness Society hanging around, and I asked if they were hiring - they were, but only fulltime positions, aw shucks. They pay $16.50/hr too. I shall have to look elsewhere.

We stopped at the chocolate shop on the way out - another good decision - white chocolate macadamia cookies and chocolate covered cherries MMMMM. I should see if that place is hiring. I still have some of the cherries in my fridge, though I doubt they'll be there for long; good chocolate is hard to come by in Australia. Then we hustled to the bus stop to go grocery shopping before Coles closed. We barbecued chicken kebabs and fries on the outside grill for dinner, then accompanied Keith to an open-mic gig he'd landed in Floreat, a town north of Perth. We took a bus, a train, and a cab to get to the bar, which turned out to be a pretty hip, modern place in a suburban area - very young management, very cool. I had the Beez Neez, Lauren had the Stella, Malte had the Carlton Dry. I'm no beer connisseur (nor do I know how to spell that word), but I may be by the end of the semester (just what you were hoping I'd say, right Mom and Dad?). Again, so sweet to see Keith play, even though the crowd could hardly be called a crowd...some more Dispatch, some more originals, even a little Shakira and Slightly Stoopid. What a night.

Today is another day off (tomorrow might as well be too, I've got an hour-long class at 10:30), so I'm looking for volunteer work/a job, making too much rice for lunch, and hopefully making a better batch of cookies with Lauren in a bit, maybe some pancakes in Keith's flat later on tonight. Our internet hasn't been working for the last two hours (I've actually had to rewrite half of this entry from the library), so that's frustrating, and I'm still not enrolled in my third unit...efficiency is really lacking around these parts, but I'm learning to roll with it. If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. If you can't do it yourself, you gotta be persistent and sometimes a bit creative. It's a good test of patience anyway.

Looking forward to a Skype conversation with my family tonight (if my internet ever kicks in)...I hear Jakey's canoe trip is going forward tomorrow, and Mol dyed her hair - lots going on at home that I wish I could be around for. Tomorrow's Festival Day - I'll have more to report after that, and after my remaining two days of class for the week. Until then, peace out, cub scouts.

"I'm in Beauty Land!"

Keith gets credit for the title of this entry - but man did he hit the echidna on the snout with that one.  The international kids got to spend the day at Forest Hills today (fo' free!), which is a national park, comprised mostly of jarrah forest and 'roos.  We had several sessions organized for us, so we were split into groups and moved swiftly through our afternoon.  Session one was "Meet the Marsupials" - OH WOW.  Two joeys, a very, very endangered creature called a woilie (forgive the butchered spelling, if anyone out there actually knows what I'm talking about) that looks like a kangaroo rat but is actually the smallest member of the kangaroo family, a python (not a marsupial, but super cool), and an echidna, which is something I've been dying to see since we got to Australia.  Still haven't met a platypus, but I have officially seen one half of the monotreme family.  YES.  Fun fact - echidnas are the oldest species of mammal on the planet.  And I met one today named Snorkle.

Session two was "Raptors" - birds of prey.  Forest Hills is an animal rehab center, so all of the birds we saw were in the process of being fixed up enough to return to the wild.  The unfortunate side of the coin is that the birds that cannot be rehabilitated have to be euthanized, because it is illegal to sell or trade animals in Australia.  Only about 10% of the creatures they find are able to be rereleased.  So that's the Debbie Downer part...today was much cheerier than that - we met a Peregrine falcon, which is probably my favorite flying creature, and is the fastest bird in the world, a goshawk with one eye, a barn owl, and a red-tailed hawk (in Australia it's some kind of eagle).  We'd only been at the park for an hour and I was already pretty positive that this is what I want to do with my life.  Maybe not birds specifically, but work at a rehab center, give tours or presentations, teach people about the animals...that'd be the life.

Session three was a bush walk - a walk through the jarrah forest with a guide pointing out interesting trees and wildlife.  Felt just like camp.  I picked up two books in the shop, one about trees in WA and one about plants...if I have to be away from the trees in America for this long I might as well learn the ones down here.

Session four was "Indigenous People."  I don't know how much the rest of the group enjoyed this one, but I loved it.  A man of Aborigine descent spoke to us about the Aboriginal culture...he was a little spacey, and a bit hard to follow at times, but my overall impression of the Aborigine people is definitely more informed.  He spoke about how every child is given a totem by their mother, some animal or plant growing on the earth, and that creature lives in their eyes, and needs to be taken care of.  The part I most related to was when he talked about how the Aborigines teach their children that eagles, frogs, humans, jarrah trees, grass...they're all on the same level.  They all need the same amount of care, the same amount of respect.  No one creature is higher than any other.  Then he taught us how to throw boomerangs, and THAT was fun (:

I think tonight will turn into another night of board games with some other international students...Lauren and I played Pictionary against Jared (crazy man from South Africa), Alex (from Australia) and Mark (from Georgia), and I think they want a rematch.  We destroyed them.  I try not to let people know how competitive I am, it's not something I'm proud of, but I think that came out a little last night.  Oh well.  Last night we also had the tour of the Fremantle prison - definitely worth the $20.  Uncle Mike, you HAVE to do this when you get here.  It was a night tour, so it was extra spooky, and of course they do a few "jump out and scare you" stunts, but our guide was so captivating that I actually enjoyed getting creeped out.  I really enjoyed the whole tour, a lot of the prison is in the condition it was when it was opened in 1855 (it closed in 1991); it's been extremely well preserved...the only part I really couldn't handle was the visit to the gallows.  I don't know why I didn't think it would be that bad, but my stomach just went to my feet as soon as we walked in.  I won't give you guys the details, but the stats and stories we heard about that place were just loathsome.

Sorry to end on a bit of a sad note...here's something happy - Lauren and I ate at a sushi bar in Fremantle the other day; you sit down on a vinyl stool and there's a circular conveyor belt rotating around the joint displaying plates of deliciousness, you take off whatever plates you want and pay for them according to the color of the plate (pink is the cheapest, green is the most expensive, etc).  SO GOOD, and so un-Australian.  Ah well, there'll be time for vegemite in days to come.

Peace to CT, and wherever else my readers hail from.  Miss you guys.

Kangaroo on the barbie.

Not a lot to say since yesterday, but I'm trying to keep these blogs a bit shorter...I don't know how anyone makes it through a whole entry, they're so long.

Big news of the day?  I moved!  I now live with Miss Lauren Alyssa Fish, just across the courtyard, in flat 39.  No balcony, but now I get to sleep with actual blankets and two whole pillows, instead of the sleeping bag I've been using over here the last week.  I was sad to say goodbye to Mohammed, Jon, Char, and the possibility of Justine, but this way I know I'll never have to skip out on a conversation with my parents or risk waking someone up because I need to Skype at 7:30am.  We got the call of approval while we were out grocery shopping (trying to find ingredients for a strange cookie recipe that called for condensed milk...final product = kind of yellow, kind of crumbly, kind of funny-tasting), so we beat feet back to the village and packed up my room in about 27 minutes so I could be on time for my meeting with Emma.

Meeting with Emma about units was...successful?  I won't know until sometime tomorrow morning.  Hooray.

Lauren and I made those cookies...here's the thing about our oven though, it's basically just a flame in a box.  No temperature control or anything.  So the cookies were pretty touch-and-go, but we ended up with probably twenty moderately edible chocolate chip cookies in the end.  Then Keith called up and invited us to join him and his roommates at the grill on the other side of the village to eat some sausages, pork, and kangaroo.  It was only 40 degrees outside, but I don't know about you, I can never turn down grilled kangaroo.  It took about an hour to get anything cooked, but it was GOOD.  Turns out I like sausage.  Kangaroo too.  It's a very different flavor, I'm not sure how to put it into words...but if I ever tasted it again I'd say OH YES, I know what this is, why this is kangaroo, fresh off the outback!  A perk about eating kangaroo meat - it's better for the environment.  Kangaroos produce less nitrogen and take less land and grass to raise, so they're lower on the energy chain.  YES.  Maybe I'll become a kangatarian.  It's pretty cheap, and they sell it on these handy kebabs that grill up real nice.

Thanks for reading - I'm off to bed, another full day of getting oriented tomorrow!

Koalas, inefficiency, and lots of rice.

ZOO DAY! That was today. My mind is abuzz with bite-sized bits of information about painted dogs, Rothschild giraffes (MY FAVORITE!_), Asian elephants...to conclude, it was a day full of oohs and aahs. Pictures to follow, if I ever figure out how to put them online.

Aside from mastering the seven-pots-of-pasta-at-once technique, Keith and I cooked fried rice yesterday. WITHOUT a rice cooker. That was my fault (we do actually have one, but when I look for things, I only look with one eye, and my vision's not so good). Man did we make rice. We made about half a bag of rice in one pot (I was in charge of that), and cooked up some carrots, celery, onions, and pork to add to it. The rice went surprisingly well, considering we didn't have a measuring cup or a knowledgeable chef in the flat. Vegis and meat turned out well too, but they probably had to cook too long to accommodate the colossal amount of rice we had prepared. Added a bit too much soy sauce too...Keith wasn't overjoyed with the final outcome, but it was hot food, and filling, and there's a lot of rice left over for second and third and fourth tries.

The only negative experience I'm having thus far at Murdoch is trying to enroll in my third class. There is one woman in charge of the enrollment for international students (she shall remain nameless), and I understand that this is an overwhelming task. There are a lot of us, and we all speak different languages. But she does not return emails, she doesn't answer questions, and twice now she's been unable to meet with four of us when we showed up at her office at a time she asked us to come. Once she was too busy to see us, and this morning she wasn't even in her office, and wouldn't be for at least an hour. Classes start in less than a week and we're all pretty anxious to get this over with, so I may have sent her an email that was a bit on the terse side...we were told to go back tomorrow at 2pm, and that's what we're going to do, unless she contacts me first and tells me otherwise. We'll see how that goes. It's not in my nature to be annoyed with people or unfriendly, but not being enrolled in all three classes also keeps us from accessing some of the services on campus, because we're not listed as full-time students. So we'll see how that goes tomorrow. Eeks.

In other news, I'm bummed about missing Jenn's birthday party, Gloucester, and the canoe trip Jakie is taking with Chad and Joe. I'm psyched about a bunch of the music Keith gave me off of his iTunes (including a bunch of Fleet Foxes, Slightly Stoopid, and the only controversial song Vanessa Carlton ever wrote, "White Houses"), and the fact that I'm about over this jetlag. I managed to stay up until 10:30 last night and didn't wake up until 7:45.

Pictures going up now. MISS YOU ALL.

Susie Homemaker

That's me, apparently.  Amazingly.  Spent the day in Freo yesterday (which was beautiful and very Australian, but more about that later), and then headed over to Keith's flat for dinner.  We were planning on cooking pasta and sauce for 10-15 people, but we didn't plan very well...it turned out alright though; we quickly learned that just about any lid, bowl, cup, etc can be used as a plate, that spatulas make GREAT serving spoons, and that college kids will eat spaghetti sauce no matter what temperature it's been cooked at.  Also, Keith doesn't know how to make pasta.  So I took over, and it may have been the most adventurous thing I've done so far.  Two pots of pasta and one pot of sauce going at once, trying to keep everything from boiling over, making sure everyone served themselves quickly so we could fill up the pots again to make more...it was hectic, but kind of empowering?  I had some myself and it tasted alright, pasta was a little starchy, but that may have just been the Coles brand we bought for 99 cents a bag (Keith and I figure someone could get five meals outta that baby, so it's definitely worth it).  After all the cooking was done I was sitting on the couch, eating "the fruits of my labor" and just kind of looking at all the people in the room...mostly Americans, but several Germans, a girl from Denmark, a few people from Singapore...everyone had just met each other within the last 48 hours I think, and I was thinking about how incredible it was, that we all ended up in this room, eating, talking a lot because we didn't have any other form of entertainment.  It's a shame the TV was ever invented, really, because look at what can happen when you put a bunch of people together and leave them to their own devices.  We were there for three hours, probably.

If this semester continues to be anything like last night was, I'm gonna love it here.

This is how real people live.

Hi again!

So the last time I wrote I was on my way to orientation. Lauren and I met up for breakfast (she continues to feed me, even now that I have my own food...but between us we are quickly exhausting the options on our list of "Easy, Cheap Meals We Know How To Cook That Actually Taste Good." Example: I'm making tortellini tonight, for the second time. If anyone has suggestions, we would both appreciate it greatly.

Orientation time. It took us a bit to actually find the building, but once we did we realized how nice this campus is. There's a sort of quad in the middle of this big square of student resource-type offices - health center, library, international office, etc., and when the sun is out, it's definitely a nice place to sit. However, when the sun is not out, it's about 55-60 degrees here...not too bad, but a cool change from what we left back in the States. Friday's orientation consisted of a million speakers talking to us about some pretty boring stuff...immigration laws, health care laws, what to do if we want to buy a car, consumer protection laws, actual law laws that protect you from getting mugged (don't worry Mom, it doesn't happen very often)...it would have been miserable except for a few things:
1. They gave us morning tea, lunch, and afternoon tea...now the tea itself is actually fairly disgusting, but the biscuits (cookies) they feed us are delicious, especially these Australian brand cookies called Tim Tams, which are chocolate cookies covered in more chocolate, but not so sweet that you wish you hadn't eaten them after eating three.
2. Most of the speakers were hilarious, or wonderfully delightful to watch. Somethings I noticed about them were that every speaker dressed very differently from the others, some were very formal and wore suits or black dresses, others wore jeans and casual shirts. It was really refreshing to see that not every person at this university is a clone...not to say that BC is full of robots, but I think in America there's generally a stricter dress code for professors and state officials. Also, every single person that spoke was POSITIVE about our experience in Australia and at Murdoch. This is a huge difference from the States, even from BC. They presented us with opportunities, not consequences. I don't think one person mentioned anything along the lines of "don't do this, you'll get into trouble" or "if you do this, this is the bad thing that will happen to you." It was lovely.
3. I met more Americans! Lauren and I met up with Danielle, another student from BC - she's been here a week already, and most of it has been pretty lonely, so she was happy to see us too. We also met Keith, from Miami, Blaine, from San Diego, and Justin and Joe, from Minnesota. We didn't actually meet many international students on Friday, and no Aussies yet, but meeting more Americans was comforting.
After orientation we had dinner at Danielle's flat - she lives in the newer part of the village, so her flat is very condo-on-the-beach-in-a-nice-part-of-Florida-esque. All white walls, nicer bathrooms (mine looks like a high school locker room bathroom, stalls and everything), heating and air conditioning, ceiling fans, all white furniture...even her bed and desk are bigger. I'm not complaining about my flat though, I think it's homier. Or it will be, once I get my pictures on the wall and FINALLY buy the right light bulb for my desk lamp (two failed attempts so far, I'm not sure why this is so hard). I'll take pictures of my room and put them online, but basically my flat consists of a kitchen/common room...the kitchen has a good number of appliances: toaster, oven, microwave, big refrigerator and freezer, stove (with gas burners that you have to light, I'm a little freaked out about those), water heater for tea and hot cocoa (if you manage to find any that's tolerable)...and it came with a small table and three chairs. The common room has two couches really similar to couches we have at BC, an end table, a coffee table, a white board (I wrote a kind little message about turning off lights and appliances before we leave, because a few times I've come home to find the television on and the lights on and nobody in the living room, I hope my roommates don't hate me already), and sliding glass door that goes out onto a little balcony that overlooks the courtyard between my flat and Lauren's flat. The bedrooms are a decent size, I think about the same size as a BC double, but more like a square instead of a narrow rectangle. I have plenty of space because I don't really have any possessions other than clothing and my computer. The walls are painted brick, and the lighting sucks, so it occasionally feels a bit like a cell, but pictures on the wall and a lit desk lamp will fix that. My only other issue is that these rooms are FREEZING. It doesn't help that I definitely did not bring enough warm clothing for the climate down here, but I feel like I need to wear gloves when I go to bed. We don't have central heating but we do have these space heaters that get pretty darn hot - I put mine right at my feet when I'm sitting at my desk and after five minutes I have to move it so I don't melt my sneakers.
Still jetlagged - I've been going to bed before nine every night this week and waking up before eight. No human being actually needs that much sleep, so it's a bit frustrating. Tonight we're going out to Freo (Fremantle, the hotspot of Western Australia) so hopefully I'll be active enough to stay awake a few hours later.
Yesterday was eventful. A bunch of us had signed up for a "tour" of Murdoch, so we showed up in front of the international office at 10am, assuming we'd be walking around campus with one of the orientation volunteers, hopefully stopping inside a lot of the buildings to warm up and down some disgusting tea...but we were in for so much more. There were about 25 students on the green...around 10:15 (Aussie time is a bit slower than US time) they announced that we would be broken into teams and sent on a self-guided, Amazing Race around campus, complete with clues and tasks and prizes. Okay, great, this sounds like fun. And it was, for the most part, except I ended up with Jared, the South African Sergeant on my team, who insisted that we run EVERYWHERE. Also on my team was Mark from Georgia, Lisa from Germany, and Daniel from an island off the coast of South Africa that I'm sure I can't spell. Daniel actually ended up dropping out pretty early because he's got smoker's lungs. Jared's great, lots of fun, but man did I hate him for awhile there. We dashed about, and I swear to God I'll be hearing "come on ladies!" and "come on American!" in my sleep for the next week and a half. We ended up coming in third, and got Murdoch t-shirts and bags as prizes, but honestly I'm not sure how much of the campus I even remember, it was such a blur. We had a barbecue afterwards...funny thing about getting free lunch from the Aussies - they never have more than one dish to eat. We had snags (sausages) and rolls for lunch, and they had cans of soda, but that was it. The day before at orientation we'd had sandwiches and sodas. They always encourage you to eat more of what they have ("you never know when you're gonna eat again!"), but they don't ever have any sides or other options. Just something else to get used to.
After lunch we headed back to Kardy's, first to get cellphones, then to do some serious grocery shopping. Hello, real world. It was kind of stressful, realizing that I had to buy food that would not only keep me from going hungry, but that I knew how to cook, that would be moderately healthy, and that wouldn't put me in debt. I think I got at least a week and a half's worth of groceries...we'll see how that works out...for fifty Australian dollars. I really know how to cook surprisingly little, so I bought a lot of pasta, peanutbutter (crunchy! that's the great thing about buying for yourself, you have nobody else's tastes to worry about), fruit and vegis (they're wicked expensive down here though, apples are $2.68 per kilo...not sure what that works out to in pounds, but it's more expensive than the US), rice, some chicken thighs, tortilla wraps, eggs...we'll see how this all goes. The cellphone shopping was successful, I got a month's worth of minutes and texts for $30, plus spent $50 on a phone. Yikes. The girl at the counter, as Keith from Miami pointed out, looked just like the girl who works at the counter in the abortion clinic in Juno, but she was way happier. I also made my first alcohol purchase yesterday - a six pack of beer called Barefoot Radler. This made my day. First of all, we walked into this liquor store called Cellarbrations and didn't even get carded; the two twenty-somethings working behind the counter were really friendly and helpful. Apparently they get paid $20 an hour, so I'm not surprised. I walked around, pretty clueless, for awhile, then found this bottled beer that had "barefoot" in the title, and it was $16 for a six pack, so I said YES, I will buy that. I was extremely excited about it, and asked the guy at the counter if it was a good choice, he said yes, apparently radlers are infused beers, and then he said "Oh yeah, and you get a free pair of socks with it." CAN THIS DAY GET BETTER? No way. I haven't tried it yet, but some of my roommates said it's good too. And the free socks are bright blue and green and have feet all over them. Don't worry, I'll take pictures.
To get all the groceries back to our flats we pushed the shopping carts down the street back to the village, and what an adventure that was. Australian grocery carts (they're actually called "trolleys") are just as wobbly and crooked as American carts, so we were constantly having to swerve the carts to avoid falling off the sidewalk. At least they have sidewalks here. It's difficult to avoid the cars too, because of the whole left-side-of-the-road-driving thing, so all in all it's quite a feat that we made it back to the village in one piece. While I was unloading my groceries (such a nice task too, and how wonder-full is it to look in the cabinet and refrigerator afterwards and see all that food?) I met my new neighbor Julie, she lives in the flat next to mine; she's from Ohio and goes to Tufts. We ended up talking for a long time, and realized that we will hopefully be in at least one class together. She's studying environmental science too. NICE.
Lauren made dinner last night - stir fry, delicious, we had some champagne to celebrate, and went to bed early AGAIN. I woke up at 7:30 today, a bit of an improvement, but I'm still hating this jetlag. Still awaiting my roommate...the three flatmates I've met are great, but when people are home they stay in their rooms. Lauren's roommates are always out and about, so her place is a bit more fun to be in. She has this French roommate named Octave (Ahk-tahve) who cooks really well, and leaves notes on the whiteboard telling people to eat the food he's made.
I'm off to hopefully master the Fremantle public transportation system, and possibly go to my first pub...peace and love (: